Worked for a Japanese company and visited the head office in Tokyo. One of the more senior managers took us to his favorite local sea food restaurant.
I hate seafood. Especially when it’s fancy and you get baby squid that looks like they were just fresh out of the water with no preparation etc (part of the “fancy”). However, culturally I had absolutely no possibility to do anything but eat, smile and praise. The courses just kept coming, each one being more disgusting than the last.
Someone on lemmy posted this recently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_pineapple
My mother in law is Korean so out of curiosity I had her pick up the Korean dish made from it (meonggae) after seeing the lemmy post. It taste like the smell of a dank metal spiral stair case at Seaworld. Even through all the (imo) tasty spices and seasoning. I asked my MIL what she likes about it and she said, “it tastes so fresh because one bite and your transported to the sea”. Especially with the older generation, the context can make the food way more than the taste
That’s like the one seafood I don’t like, specifically because of the metal taste. You can be “transported to the sea” without needing to lick spoons while you’re underwater.
Durian fruit. That is the most vile thing I have ever tasted and the after taste lasted for like 5 hours.
That shit is fucking evil.
Once took durian chocolate home from a trip to Malaysia. Had to open it on the balcony. Tasted like someone vomited right into my mouth. Had to leave the chocolate on the balcony for a few days because I could not stomach the smell.
0/0 never again.
It’s not bad as long as you don’t think about baby poo while you eat it
“It’s not bad as long as you don’t breathe.”
I have that same mantra about life
I think the most famous description of Durian is “like eating custard in a sewer”. I’ve never tried it, since we don’t get it in the UK, but I’m curious. I had a Malaysian friend who loved it, but said many businesses and public transport would have signs up saying no Durian due to the smell.
It’s honestly not bad after a few tries. For me, the texture and overwhelming smell was a surprise at first but the actual taste isn’t that bad.
I am not a picky eater and enjoy many exotic, strong smelling/tasting foods.
But not durian.
I’ve eaten chicken feet, haggis, blood pudding, sisig, century egg, durian, dinuguan, tripe and tongue tacos, frog legs, snails, alligator, whole softshell crab, and probably a few more delights that I ought to remember. The only one I absolutely cannot stomach is the century egg.
How was the century egg prepared? I knew some guys in high school that decided to buy random stuff at the asian grocery store and they ate the century egg as if it was a regular boiled egg then threw up. I’ve had it in small pieces with congee and that was pretty good though.
I’d used it in a recipe to try and make congee, inspired by a pop-up in Seattle called Secret Congee. Theirs is good as hell, but my first try deterred me entirely from that questline.
Sisig mentioned rahhh 🇵🇭🔥💯
We’re a “barrel man on the mantle” type of family, you know?
I dunno what that means but I’m guessing it’s not good. You also did mention Dinuguan which I like also.
Matter of taste I guess - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_man_(novelty)
I like dinuguan and sisig, but I’ve definitely had plates of sisig I’ve regretted.
Oh, that 😂 I’m so ashamed I didn’t get it straight away even though I’m Filipino 😅
What type of sisig did you have? It’s traditionally made with pig’s head but if you don’t want that, you can’t go wrong with pork belly or chicken cut into small chunks 👍🏽
It was pig’s ear and other head stuff, but the real problem was that it was about half as fresh as it should have been. I only mentioned sisig in this post as a way of listing all the gnarly stuff I’ve liked over the years to compare it to the one thing I just can’t handle (except as an ingredient in one dish ever apparently). Little quiet karaoke place with no customers that used to be in Seattle, back when I lived stateside. Not surprised to find out that it’s gone, they needed a different crowd.
I had a hunch it’s the way it’s cooked, should always be fresh.
The crab poboy sandwich with the legs hanging out of it was as a staple of my childhood, whenever we went to New Orleans I wanted one.
Alligator we can get here but it’s unremarkable in flavor.
Anything I’ve bought at a sports stadium. The FootyScran twitter account catalogues some similar examples -
That’s straight up disrespectful
Looks like a euro burger on a US bun.
Oh… I’m so sorry. That should be illegal.
Did they scrape that off the bottom of one of the seats?
The FootyScran twitter account catalogues some similar examples
Relevant daily game: scrandle.
Camel fat. It tastes like how a camel smells.
Never smelt one but I assume really sweaty?
Musky and hairy, like a slightly damp dog that’s been out in the hot sun, but muskier.
My mouth is watering. No wait, those are tears of sadness.
Let me put this in my tinder bio immediately
Aspic
If you warm it up, it becomes soup!
Never had aspic but I had some unflavoured gelatin one time for a temporary restricted diet and I swear it tasted like licking the armpits and feet of a pig that had freshly been smeared with sheep shit.
That’s about accurate :3… honestly aspic doesn’t taste that bad? I mean it’s just meat and vegetables essentially, but the texture is horrible. It’s not like commercial gelatin you buy in packets, it’s more firm and grainy, while still having that wobble, and it just makes me gag
I actually just googled the unflavoured gelatin to see if other people agreed with me and it seems to be the specific “knox” brand I got. They must scrape it off the floor of a pig processing factory or something, I even tried mixing it with some gatorade and it tasted like eating solidified sweat right out lebron’s ass crack midgame
Thanks for painting that beautiful picture with your words
I’ve been called the lovechild of Picasso and shakespeare. Not by others, just myself. And not often, just once. Like 20 seconds ago.
It is boiled feet, skin and bones. The purifying process can only do so much.
Preface: All seafood makes me violently ill. I wish it weren’t so, but here we are.
While living in Switzerland we went to an ikea and found what I thought to be spreadable cheese in a toothpaste type tube. For reference lots of stuff over there comes in those types of tubes. Why not cheese?
I was so excited to get home and immediately tore the cap off and squeezed a giant dollop of what my mouth expected to be something like cheez whiz.
NOPE. NOPE FUCKING NOPE. It was some kind of fish paste with roe…
I puked for like 30 minutes straight and couldn’t get that taste out of my mouth until we found some kirsch liqueur that I also hate, but whose taste will overpower anything.
Picture related: The culprit
In their defense, it literally says “kaviar.”
Oh they have none of the blame! I am a big stupid man who didn’t bother to read it at all.
I had that in Norway, and it is the best shit ever. I’d eat that in such vast quantities if it was as cheap and available here as it is in the Nordics.
This is a staple food in Norway. The Norwegian variant is made with smoked cod roe.
Think the Swedish variant is some kind of freshwater fish? Can’t imagine IKEA will deliver culinary greatness tho’
Hah ! my dad loves this stuff. Couldn’t ever figure out why. As a child I would get excited seeing a tube of paste in the fridge thinking it might be concentrated milk.
I’ve eaten a lot of pretty crazy stuff by western standards. The most challenging thing I have eaten was a giant water bug. The most challenging thing I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat was balut.
The water bug was definitely not the worst thing I’ve eaten though; it was unbelievably fragrant. Practically like eating perfume.
Esters I bet it’s rich in esters
Probably. I know it’s a pheromone and is much more concentrated in males making them more valuable/desired
My question for folks, though…:
When faced with eating a giant water bug for the first time, would you bite the head side first or the butt side first?I struggled with this decision…
ETA: (for reference)
Ok…it’s not a competition…but you win…
Is that someone people actually eat?
Probably, entomophagy is not that uncommon outside of western countries.
It is popular in a lot of Southeast Asia. You can even buy commercial chili pastes with the essence of water bug in them.
Balut actually tastes pretty good chicken and egg. Even though it was a duck egg. But yah I could never do it again.
Giant water bug? I love those things!
Nettle stew. Yes, it’s good for you. It tastes like cow shit to me.
There’s a local grocery store chain here that has the most bland tasting everything in their prepared food counter. You’ve never eaten such tasteless food in your life. Poor seasoning? Try none at all. Everything tastes like cardboard.
Want to simulate what it’s like to eat food as a 30 year long habitual chain smoker, shop at Freson Bros.
Kellogg would cum his pants on the spot discovering such blandness could exist.
Their potato salad gave me depression. I didn’t know you could make a calzone taste like the box it came in.
I am weirdly intrigued. You make it sound like a curiosity
I seem to write better when I’m passionate about something. What gets me is none of it looks* off/shitty visually. Like the coleslaw looks appealing until you eat a mouth full and wish to die from your utter disappointment. If the Demiurge is real, one of his angels runs their kitchen just to fuck with people.
Or Famine, one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. Make food that looks good but doesn’t feed anyone, made of sawdust and wax.
I need to try this now
I actually like the taste of unseasoned food.
Couple months ago I got a tonsillectomy. I got nerve damage in my tongue as a side effect of a tool they used and everything tastes different since. Tomato based pasta sauces have been the absolute worst, it tastes very metallic. The only normal type of food I can stand is Asian food that isn’t breaded/fried.
LOL, 80% of our home cooked meals either have tomatoes and/or fried Asian food. :)
Balut, it tasted good actually but the physiological hurdles I could only eat one and could not do it again.
Anytime I’ve seen a video of them, they mention the feathers/skull/or juice and I’m thinking “please stfu”
My neighbor growing up had chickens and would bring us eggs all the time. One day, I was making boiled eggs with them and a couple of them were partially developed. I was around 12 at the time and I don’t think I ate eggs again till I lived on my own years later.
Oh my g…… you just took me back to my childhood! I miss balut! My kids loved it until they grew up and figured out what it was. 🐣
ugh it didn’t taste good to me and gave me three days of diarrhea. Balut was definitely my worst meal
Surströmming with mämmi
Would it have been better with papi?
Properly prepared or improperly prepared?
I had a chicken sandwich once that was still pink in the middle… Disgusting!
Chicken sashimi is a thing in Japan, so consider yourself cultured
They also vaccinate their chickens against salmonella and don’t wash them with chlorine in Japan, unlike in the US.
Cultured? 🤔
Hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Logically, you should be thanking whoever made that for you.
I’ve had that and it wasn’t bad per se, it was just like… why? None of the benefits of the flavors of other raw meats like steak or horse, just bland and boring
Never had it but I’ve heard it kinda resembles a mild cut of sashimi
Mother in law fed me pink turkey.
She used an insta pot, loaded to the brim with turkey legs, but she set it on air fryer mode by accident. Mine was on top, so it looked fine, and she didn’t notice the lower ones were raw until I’d already started eating.
Fun night. Didn’t get sick 🤷♂️
Witloof, its this variant of cabbage that is long thin and completely white. And it has one of the most pungent bitter tastes ive ever had the misfortune to discover. The taste is hard to describe, but it’s similar to bee spit,also known as honey, except replace all the love and care that the bees spat with, with pure malice and wasp hatred. It is incredibly sweet, ungodly bitter and has after cooking the texture of overcooked pasta
My mother used to serve it without sauce, ham, or anything else to hide it. Vile.
